


tremor

by badacts



Category: All For the Game - Nora Sakavic
Genre: Domestic, M/M, Sick Fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-06
Updated: 2016-05-06
Packaged: 2018-06-06 15:48:48
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6760177
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/badacts/pseuds/badacts
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>“Do I need to take you to the emergency room?” Andrew asks, feeling his eyebrows creep up.</p>
            </blockquote>





	tremor

The apartment is quiet when Andrew gets in, but it’s late enough that that isn’t a surprise. Neil had been playing tonight the same time as Andrew at home, but Andrew’s additional three-hour drive means it is well after midnight now. King _mrrps_ quietly to him when he puts his keys on the bench, winding between his ankles while he pours himself a glass of water.

Andrew leaves the glass in the sink rather than putting it in the dishwasher for the express purpose of causing Neil to be pissed at him in the morning. It’s one of life’s simple pleasures, that narrow-eyed glare.

Neil’s apartment, which is technically their apartment except for how Andrew is currently living several hundred kilometres away playing on another team, is small but familiarly like the dorms in Fox Tower. Neil’s left his gear bag slumped against the door of the hall cupboard like he wants Andrew to break his neck on it. The bedroom door is cracked, and Andrew slides it open near-silently.

The bedroom is dark apart from a little moonlight from the uncurtained window, so the hall light throws a beam of light over the bed. Sir, who is curled up against the pillows, blinks his reflecting eyes as though he can’t believe he’s been woken up. Neil, who starts at noises but never stirs to light, wouldn’t have woken, except for the fact that he’s not actually in bed.

That’s – not right, and Andrew gropes for his phone before he remembers Neil’s car parked in his spot under the building, his bag, and the way the sheets are thrown back on the bed. It’s an instinctive kind of uncertainty that comes from knowing Neil’s habits as well as he knows his own, like the way Neil always goes into the kitchen if he can’t sleep to sit in the tiny nook by the window there. That and the fact that it’s too quiet.

There aren’t that many places Neil could actually be, which is what makes Andrew walk through to the adjoining bathroom without pausing. He reaches out to the light switch right as his foot collides with something that shouldn’t be there.

Neil, who certainly shouldn’t be lying sprawled half on his face on the bathroom floor.

Panic isn’t known to Andrew Minyard in the same way that unbridled joy isn’t, but it’s a rather more familiar taste in his mouth than any kind of happiness. Andrew at eleven, at thirteen, at twenty staring across an emptying stadium with Neil’s abandoned bag clenched in his fists – they’d all felt the same strangling leap that his heart does into his throat right now.

His muttered, “ _Neil_ ,” rings in his ears more than it echoes in the bathroom, not least because it’s quiet enough it barely makes it out of his mouth to start with.

Thankfully before he has the chance to do anything drastic, Neil stirs and pulls his bare foot away from where it’s brushing against Andrew’s sneaker. His head turns, and Andrew’s brain catches up enough to notice the way it’s pillowed on his arm like he lay there rather than collapsing, his hair a little damp with sweat and pink splotches adorning his cheek.

“Andrew?” he asks, barely awake, his eyelashes fluttering against his face. Andrew drops to one knee next to him and wraps his fingers around the burning skin of the back of Neil’s neck so he can jostle Neil enough to get those eyes open. Neil blinks at him and then lets out the most stupidly relieved sigh that Andrew has ever had the misfortune of hearing.

“Josten,” Andrew says through his teeth. Neil has pulled the towels off of the rail and has made them into a makeshift bed in the narrow gap between the bath and vanity like that’s a suitable replacement for a mattress when you clearly aren’t well.

Andrew was never sickly beyond the occasional cold as a child and he doubts that Neil was either. He is familiar enough with the concept to know a fever when he sees one though.

As though in response to this train of thought, Neil drags himself properly onto his side and curls up around his stomach. He’s still not particularly lucid but he looks miserable with hair plastered to his forehead, little lines drawn into the skin around his mouth.

“How long has this been going on?” Andrew asks gruffly, putting his hand against Neil’s stomach to test for any reaction. As far as he knows, Neil had played like normal tonight, though he wouldn’t put it past him to try and push through illness the same way he has done with injury in the past.

“Not long,” Neil replies, a little slurred. “Just – stomach bug, maybe. Martin and Whitehall have both been out, last couple weeks.”

Martin and Whitehall are Neil’s two enormous backliners. Andrew struggles to imagine them looking quite so pathetic as Neil does right now. He can’t quite decide whether he’s actively irritated at Neil or not, but at least his heart isn’t going wild anymore.

“Get up,” he says, grabbing Neil’s wrist. “Come on." It takes the two of them to lever him up, and Neil continues to clutch at his stomach pitifully when Andrew forcibly shuffles him to the bed. He lowers himself carefully, closing his eyes as soon as he’s horizontal with new sweat breaking out across his forehead.

“Are you going to be sick?” Andrew asks.

“Don’t think there’s anything left in my stomach,” Neil rasps back.

Andrew leaves him to procure a plastic bin that he drops down by Neil’s side. Neil himself seems to be in the process of winding himself into the blankets, his body now racked with shivers.

“Do I need to take you to the emergency room?” Andrew asks, feeling his eyebrows creep up. Neil snarls something into his pillow which sums up his feelings pretty well. “Fine. Don’t choke on your own vomit.”

When he goes to leave, Neil makes a sound of protest. When Andrew looks at him there’s one bright blue eye watching him from amongst the folds of the blankets. He doesn’t really have to ask – while Andrew would rather not lie next to a shivering and sweating lump all night, he would also prefer not to be exiled to the couch on one of the rare nights they’re together at the moment.

With a sigh, he drops his phone on the bedside table and himself on the other side of the bed. Neil turns to face him – not that Andrew can really tell, seeing as all he can see is sheets – and immediately falls asleep. Andrew does the same not that long after.

He wakes up what feels like a few minutes later to Neil hanging half off of the bed and retching miserably. His phone informs him that it’s four in the morning when he checks it. When Andrew reaches out to touch the skin at the back of Neil’s neck again it’s still hot and damp. His entire body is straining with effort, and when the wave finishes he goes slack suddenly enough that only a quick grab on Andrew’s part stops him from falling the rest of the way out of bed.

The process of resituating Neil on the bed isn’t made easier by the fact that he grabs at Andrew weakly while he’s trying to get him covered up. As soon as he’s flat again the shivers start up. It’s particularly pathetic; between the weakly clutching fingers and the way Neil is trembling, it’s easier to push his body up against Neil’s than pull away. Apparently his presence – or maybe his warmth – is comforting enough that the shivering eases within a couple of minutes and Neil comes out of the daze. He mutters something that Andrew doesn’t particularly care about into Andrew’s shirt, letting him go and tucking his hands between their bodies.

“Go back to sleep,” Andrew tells him. While he has a vague thought of calling Abby, he mostly knows that the best they can do is wait this out. The more Neil can sleep through, the better.

Neil does go back to sleep – Andrew dozes lightly for a while, aware that at any moment Neil could wake and jerk away from him. Neil doesn’t stir until the light is already creeping through the windows, and even then it’s only because he’s so used to waking then for practice.

Predictably, that’s also the first thing he thinks about. He goes to get up, pauses mid-way through the action like realising sudden movements might be a bad idea, and then lies down again. Andrew looks up from where he’d been scrolling through the news on his phone to take in Neil’s stymied expression. His fever had broken an hour or so ago, but Andrew doubts that he’ll be feeling up to much more than lying around this morning.

“I already messaged them to tell them you wouldn’t be there this morning,” he says, meaning Neil’s team manager and coaches.

“They probably think I’m taking the day to have sex with you now,” Neil rasps back.

“Joke’s on them. I can’t think of anything I’d rather do less than have sex with you right now,” Andrew replies, with the ease that comes from a seven-year-long relationship with the same person.

“That’s fine, because I can’t think of anything I’d rather do less than have sex right now,” Neil admits, “Other than go to practice. Maybe.”

“Don’t lie for my benefit,” Andrew says. He’s well aware of where Neil’s priorities place sex compared with Exy. He also knows the priority that he himself has compared with both.

“Thanks,” Neil says, seemingly apropos of nothing. He’s very predictable, though, so he probably means thanks for both staying last night and not pushing him off of the bed when he’d woken Andrew rather than pulling him back up. After seven years, Andrew also knows that this doesn’t require a response, because Neil has never expected a graceful acceptance of thanks from him.

“Go back to sleep,” he says instead, “You’re going to have to clean up after yourself later.”

That’s a lie, and they both know it. Neil hums and does as Andrew says, for once in his life, the curve of a smile on his face even as he closes his eyes.

 


End file.
